March 3 was designated as Sun Day by U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 1978, at the suggestion of Denis Hayes, who coordinated the first Earth Day in 1970. It is a day for advocacy of solar power. For the first Sun Day, there were events on the Mall in Washington DC, including speeches by environmental activist Barry Commoner and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, and a concert by Jackson Browne. Events were also planned in 22 other countries.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) American’s best-known woman poet and one of the nation’s greatest and most original authors, lived the life of a recluse in Amherst Massachusetts. She wrote nearly 1800 poems, ignoring the traditional poetic forms prevailing among most of the other poets of her day. The extent of her work wasn’t known until after her death, when her younger sister Lavinia discovered her cache of poems.

To read Emily Dickinson’s poem, “I’ll Tell You How the Sun Rose” click

I’ll Tell You How the Sun Rose (204)

by Emily Dickinson

I’ll tell you how the sun rose, –
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.

The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
“That must have been the sun!”

But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile.
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.

“I’ll Tell You How the Sun Rose”(204) from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin – Harvard University Press, 1999